Encyclopedia

U.S. senator (1881-86), Sixth Circuit Court (1886-92), Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (1892-93), and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1893-95), Howell E. Jackson was best remembered for his role in the Pollock Income Tax Decision of 1895. He…

The daughter of John Donelson and Rachel Stockley and wife of President Andrew Jackson, Rachel Donelson was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. In December 1779 her family set out for the West, arriving at Fort Nashborough (now Nashville) in April…

Consisting of President Andrew Jackson and his circle of advisors, the Jacksonians were recognized as leaders of the Democratic Party both nationally and within Tennessee. Jackson's Tennessee associates included Judge John Overton; Senator John H. Eaton; Major William B. Lewis;…

The first county in the United States to be consolidated with another, James County was a unique venture in government and the only such instance in Tennessee history. Organized in 1871, largely from Hamilton County and a fraction of Bradley…

This historic site in Columbia is the only surviving residence of the eleventh U.S. president, excluding the White House. James K. Polk was attending the University of North Carolina in 1816 when his father Samuel built the two-story, Federal-style house…

Memphis is known for blues and early rock-n-roll traditions, and Nashville is famous for country music, but both also move to the strains of jazz. In no part of Tennessee, however, did jazz ever enjoy commercial or popular success, or…

When Goodspeed published its well-known history of Tennessee in 1887, it concluded that "No Tennessee county has a more honorable record or a more interesting history than Jefferson." The second of twenty-six American counties so named, its early settlers were…

Ray H. Jenkins, trial lawyer and chief counsel for the U.S. Senate in the Army-McCarthy hearings, was born in Cherokee County, North Carolina, in 1897. The family soon moved to the community of Rural Vale in Monroe County, Tennessee, and…

The settlement of Jews in Tennessee reflected the larger migration and settlement patterns of Jews within the United States over the last two centuries. These patterns created distinctive forms of Jewish life in the major Jewish communities of Tennessee: Memphis,…